4 ms·

This is well done. Curious, do levels look better now, taking advantage of modern video cards, than their original, native platform ? I'm looking at Kingdom H

This is well done. Curious, do levels look better now, taking advantage of modern video cards, than their original, native platform ? I'm looking at Kingdom Hearts, and it looks quite amazing for a PS2 game.

ehnto 5y ago
The answer is, it depends! Games that try for realism tend to hold up poorly as time goes on, but games that have a very congruent less than real art style, not just cartoony games but all kinds of different styles, can hold up a lot better. As well, some game art was designed to be played on CRT monitors, or at lower resolution, which gives a very different experience when played on a modern screen with a high resolution. The bluring and less discrete nature of pixels on older devices lended a lot of affordances to artists working with lower resolutions.
- vbsteven 5y ago
  The FFX example stood out for me. It looked much smoother, less jagged edges from what I remember playing it on PS2. Although there was an HD remaster for PS4. I don't know which assets were used.
- Akronymus 5y ago
  Not to forget composite colour artifacting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc
greggman3 5y ago
For those games I'm not sure but for PS1 games, most level visualizers don't emulate the non-perspective correct texture mapping so they look much better. https://phoboslab.org/wipeout/ https://phoboslab.org/wipeout/ Further they often leave texture filtering on when the old console didn't have any. Also of course older consoles ran lower-res
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Yes; even a decade or more ago, games looked better because they could be rendered at a higher resolution. Especially PS1 or PS2 games like Gran Turismo looked great when rendered at a higher resolution. Here's a picture of Dragon Quest 'native PS2' versus higher emulated resolution: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2sc80x/psa_remember_to_upscale_your_emulators_when/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2sc80x/psa_re... One thing that is lagging will be the original texture resolution of the games. They look more crisp in that particular screenshot, but in some games there's just not enough information. However, a while ago someone used AI technology to upscale the 2d backgrounds of PS1 era Final Fantasy games, with great results: https://youtu.be/OaEgc46FNWE https://youtu.be/OaEgc46FNWE. I think this same technology can be used to - relatively quick / easy / dirty - remaster older games. edit: or even fairly modern ones ones; FFXIV for example has pretty low resolution textures by default, which is especially obvious in e.g. outfits during cutscenes. There's tools out there to replace textures (its anti-cheat / tampering doesn't verify the assets), I wonder if someone's redone all the 'vanilla' textures like that.

ehnto 5y ago

The answer is, it depends! Games that try for realism tend to hold up poorly as time goes on, but games that have a very congruent less than real art style, not just cartoony games but all kinds of different styles, can hold up a lot better. As well, some game art was designed to be played on CRT monitors, or at lower resolution, which gives a very different experience when played on a modern screen with a high resolution. The bluring and less discrete nature of pixels on older devices lended a lot of affordances to artists working with lower resolutions.

vbsteven 5y ago
The FFX example stood out for me. It looked much smoother, less jagged edges from what I remember playing it on PS2. Although there was an HD remaster for PS4. I don't know which assets were used.
Akronymus 5y ago
Not to forget composite colour artifacting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc

greggman3 5y ago

For those games I'm not sure but for PS1 games, most level visualizers don't emulate the non-perspective correct texture mapping so they look much better. https://phoboslab.org/wipeout/ https://phoboslab.org/wipeout/ Further they often leave texture filtering on when the old console didn't have any. Also of course older consoles ran lower-res

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Yes; even a decade or more ago, games looked better because they could be rendered at a higher resolution. Especially PS1 or PS2 games like Gran Turismo looked great when rendered at a higher resolution. Here's a picture of Dragon Quest 'native PS2' versus higher emulated resolution: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2sc80x/psa_remember_to_upscale_your_emulators_when/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2sc80x/psa_re... One thing that is lagging will be the original texture resolution of the games. They look more crisp in that particular screenshot, but in some games there's just not enough information. However, a while ago someone used AI technology to upscale the 2d backgrounds of PS1 era Final Fantasy games, with great results: https://youtu.be/OaEgc46FNWE https://youtu.be/OaEgc46FNWE. I think this same technology can be used to - relatively quick / easy / dirty - remaster older games. edit: or even fairly modern ones ones; FFXIV for example has pretty low resolution textures by default, which is especially obvious in e.g. outfits during cutscenes. There's tools out there to replace textures (its anti-cheat / tampering doesn't verify the assets), I wonder if someone's redone all the 'vanilla' textures like that.